


Stabat Mater

by ExpatGirl



Series: Things That Will Probably Not Happen in Season 12 [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Hugs, M/M, POV Mary Winchester, Post-Season/Series 11, Suicide (mentioned), Swearing, Weird family dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-24
Updated: 2016-08-24
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:50:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/pseuds/ExpatGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Mary's pretty sure she did some serious damage to Dean's shoulder when she laid him out.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stabat Mater

Mary's pretty sure she did some serious damage to Dean's shoulder when she laid him out. She doesn't apologize as she gets in the car.

Something about him's not right, and not because when she saw him, that night, he was asking her if he'd make any friends at pre-K and now he's old enough to have kids of his own. Not that he looks like the kids-having kind. No, something about it—about _him—_ isn't right, something tastes sulfurous in her throat, something of ozone lingers on him. But her legs feel like they belong to someone else, and when she decks him, her whole body seems to slide like she's on a sheet of ice. She lands on her hands and knees next to him. She feels like she's dug her way out of a deep hole.

Why is she wearing this ugly fucking nightgown outside?

 _Oh my god_ , she thinks. _D_ _o I have Alzheimer's? I_ _s this what's happening to me?_ A hunter losing her grip on reality, her memory. That's a recipe for a loose nuke if ever she heard one. _Should probably just eat a bullet now_.

He gets up first, sitting back on his heels next to her, where she's breathing like she's just been born.

“Come on, m--” She hears the hesitation, a fraction of a second. “Mary.” His voice is soft, like she's a spooked animal. Like he does this a lot. His hand hovers an inch from her back, and he lets it fall away. “Let's get you somewhere warm, huh?”

She nods and gets up on her own. She follows him to the car— _John's car—_ and gets in, and doesn't apologize.

Inside, the car smells the same, the seats feel the same, her face in the sideview mirror looks the same, and Dean is a stranger.

****

It dawns on her that she hasn't said a word in two days, and Dean's been following her lead. Or maybe he's just not much of a talker. Time seems to be moving the wrong way.

The interior of whatever this place is— _”_ Home, sweet home!”—makes her feel a little less untethered. The furniture, the lighting, they're things of her parents' generation, if not their budget. Mom would've liked the lamps. And the gun range. Dad would have appreciated the craftsmanship of the table, would have appreciated the books even more.

She hasn't asked what year it is, and she hasn't asked how she got here. She's pretty sure she won't like either answer.

Dean spends his time muttering _god damn_ _it_ at small glowing screen or frowning at a larger glowing screen. He's still favoring his shoulder.

This place is _huge_. Like the nicest barrack she'd ever seen, and Dean seems to be the only one in it.

He's spooked. He tamped it down almost immediately, but she's always been good at reading people—it's how you can tell them from other things, a lot of the time—and the man is clearly in a constant state of lowlevel distress. He paces like he's in a cage, not his home. At the end of the second day, she breaks her silence to say: “If you need to go somewhere, don't stay here on my account.”

He startles, turns wide eyes on her—she recognizes that look, those eyes, those lashes, she's counted them while he slept—and she looks down at the red-rimmed mug she's been holding, like a shield, in front of her. “You...you're still getting your sealegs. I'm not gonna just...leave you.”

“I know something's wrong, Dean. You can't...” She swallows thickly. “You can't hide these things from your mother.”

His faces crumples for a moment, and she fights the urge to go to him. The sulfur and ozone are almost unnoticeable now. And there's an arsenal of magic and weaponry in here—the likes of which she's never even dreamed about—and he hasn't turned any of it on her yet. But. “Mom...”

“You've got two options, the way I see it. You do something, or you don't.”

“I don't.” He runs his hand through his hair. He needs a shave. “I don't even know where to start looking.”

“Looking?” she asks, setting the mug down. “For what?”

“I don't wanna drag you into it.”

“It's a little late for that.”

He looks away, like he used to, when he overheard her and John fighting and thought he was in trouble for it.

“Dean,” she says, and this is a voice she remembers how to use. “Just tell me.”

“This place was empty when we got here.”

“It's not normally?” She can feel her spine straightening. All doors in the hall, save Dean's, have been shut

“No. There should've been, uh, a couple other people here. When we got in, there were signs of...some bad shit going down. Sorry, sorry...”

“What kind of bad shit?”

“The kind that leaves a blood trail.”

All at once her nerves belong to her again. They crackle like fireworks under her skin. It hurts and she welcomes it. She pulls on the cuffs of the too-large shirt she's wearing and sits forward.

“Tell me everything.”

****

They find a man walking in the desert. Dean's tracking him through that small glowing screen that he insists is a phone, but might be magic, who the hell knows.

Underneath the road rash he's probably good-looking. Strange, there hasn't been a car or town for miles.

She throws her arm across Dean's chest as he slams on the brakes. “Dean, what...” she asks, but he's already climbing out of the car, and she feels, for the second, third, hundredth time, that she's been dropped out of the sky and burned up on re-entry.

Then she sees his face—the man who summoned himself out of the desert clay has eyes the color of deep water, and he starts spilling tears as Dean approaches him. Dean hugs him, and the man—it definitely isn't Sam, is it the other one? The one with the strange, clipped name?—turns his eyes Heavenwards and holds him, and breathes in. The relief on his face, the—what is it? What _is it_? _God, there's so much of it there—_ makes something in her own chest catch.

When Dean gets in the car, long minutes later, he's no longer favoring his shoulder.

The very first thing the man says, as he gets into the car, is: “We're going to find him.”

There's the feel of lightning in the air, though the sky is cloudless.

“Yeah,” Dean says, like thunder. “We are.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for typos and weird crap. I am hopped up on all kinds of meds in an attempt to tackle whatever virulent thing has invaded my body. Which is why I'm writing this instead of in bed. Just point 'em out and I'll fix them.


End file.
